News for Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Obits

Stories

When Gail Severson’s son, Dan, invited her to lunch in the middle of the week, she was somewhat surprised.
When they arrived at the Moffat County Fairgrounds Pavilion instead of a restaurant, she was curious.
When the two of them met up with her daughters, Julie Baker and Terri Jourgensen, she was downright suspicious.
As she later found out, she had good reason to be.

VFW hosting welcome home party Sunday for Lance Cpl. Kaleb McCarthy

This weekend, a Craig serviceman returns home from the front lines in Afghanistan.
Lance Cpl. Kaleb McCarthy, 21, recently completed his second tour of duty with Fox Company, Second Battalion, in the Fourth Marine Division.
He was stationed in Musa Qala, located in the southeastern Afghan province of Helmand.

Johnny Landa never would have guessed what started out as a challenge would develop into a passion
Two years ago as a sophomore, Landa said friend and running partner Alfredo Lebron made fun of him saying he wouldn’t be able to make it on the Moffat County High School track and field team.
Not one to back down, Landa signed up to run.

Court documents: Suspect demanded money from teller through a note

Charges have been filed against a 21-year-old Louisiana man suspected of an April 12 robbery at Mountain Valley Bank in Meeker.
Jock Waylon Thacker, of Louisiana, is charged in Rio Blanco County Court with robbery and theft of $1,000 to $20,000, both Class 4 felonies.
According to court documents, Thacker allegedly entered the bank, 400 Main St., just after 9 a.m. April 12 and approached the teller counter.

For 34 years, Craig Mortensen got to run the Moffat County High School basketball program the way he wanted.
Whether coaching the boys or girls team, Mortensen always had the final say for the Bulldogs.
However as an assistant coach for the Adams State College women’s basketball team, Mortensen was in a position to learn as well as teach.
“Every coaching style is different and every coach has a different way of doing things,” Mortensen said. “As an assistant coach, I got to see how a team was ran from someone else’s viewpoint and I learned more about the game of basketball.

It may take explosives to dislodge a group of cows that wandered into an old ranger cabin high in the Rocky Mountains, then died and froze solid when they couldn't get out.
The carcasses were discovered by two Air Force Academy cadets when they snow-shoed up to the cabin in late March. Rangers believe the animals sought shelter during a snowstorm and got stuck and weren't smart enough to find their way out.
The cabin is located near the Conundrum Hot Springs, a nine-mile hike from the Aspen area in the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness area.
Michael Carroll, a spokesman for the Wilderness Society in Colorado, said cattle are often allowed to wander on federal wilderness lands as long as ranchers get a permit from the Forest Service, and sometimes the animals get separated from the herd.

Colorado Springs police are investigating after a man says he was shot after denying another man's request for a cigarette.
Investigators say the man was dropped off Monday at Memorial Hospital with a gunshot wound to the leg. The injury was not life-threatening.
The man tells police he was out walking when he was approached by an unknown man who asked for a cigarette. When the victim told the man he did not have a cigarette, the other man pulled out a gun and started shooting.

As a 20-year retired firefighter for the Craig Rural Fire Protection District, I am somewhat insulted by the editorial board’s uneducated stance on the proposed training center.
You make a statement that this is not about the firefighters themselves. But by your comments you are saying they do not deserve a place to effectively train as a team and to put their lives on the line to protect all of us without the best training available. This training center is just as important as any other piece of equipment provided to our firefighters.
When I became a rookie in 1986 there was no real structured training classes. We learned from our mistakes and from what senior firefighters tried to teach us. A couple years later we as a younger group of firefighters realized how important training was for the district we protected and more importantly our own safety.
We set out to become firefighter 1 certified. Firefighter certifications are a nationally known and accepted firefighter training curriculum where you learn all aspects of safe, effective firefighting.

A newborn who was abducted form his dying mother after she was repeatedly shot outside a doctor's office in suburban Houston was found safe Tuesday night, investigators said.
The healthy 3-day-old infant was found around 8 p.m., about six hours after his mother was fatally shot following a verbal altercation in a parking lot, Montgomery County District Attorney Brett Ligon said. Ligon wouldn't say where the infant was found, but he said the baby was being reunited with his father.
A person of interest has been detained though no charges have been filed, he said.
The boy's mother, 28-year-old Kayla Marie Golden, was leaving an afternoon checkup with her son when she had a verbal altercation with a woman in a Lexus parked next to her pickup truck, Montgomery County sheriff's Lt. Dan Norris said.

As the 100-yard freestyle race came to a close Saturday in Montrose, swimmers and coaches alike where cheering on the athlete in the outside lane.
It wasn’t a record-breaking performance or a swimmer pushing for a state-qualifying time.
Curtis Bowser was 20 seconds behind every other swimmer in his heat, but his last-place finish wasn’t the real story.
Bowser, a Moffat County High School sophomore, had hardly been in a pool in his 16 years let alone been a competitive swimmer before joining the MCHS boys swimming team this season.

After battling fires for more than 20 years, Shawn Telford knows the virtue of patience and persistence on the job.
However, the seasoned firefighter was just as pleased as the rest of his crew to finally see the end result of a project more than decade in the making.
The Craig Interagency Hotshots welcomed the community into their new home Tuesday morning during a ceremonial ribbon cutting and open house to celebrate the group’s new facilities at 459 Center St.
Telford, superintendent of the Craig crew, was among those to speak at the event, noting the significance of the moment that had been building since the Hotshots began in Craig in 2001.

More than 50 local residents and one visitor from Alabama braved the cool air Tuesday for an afternoon filled with protest, music and Constitutional education.
The Bears Ears Tea Party Patriots tax day Freedom Rally, an annual event intended to educate local voters about the dealings in Washington, D.C., and inspire change, was headlined by singer/songwriter Joyce Shaffer, of Loma.
Shaffer, a Nashville recording artist and recent inductee into America's Old Time Country Music Hall of Fame, bases the bulk of her catalogue on recent events in America.
Her songs include titles such as “September 11,” “America is Color-Blind,” “Tucson,” and “Takin’ Back Our Country,” which has received more than 340,000 hits on YouTube.

Venders who plan on participating in the 2012 Craig Farmers Market will meet from 6 to 7 p.m. Thursday at Downtown Books, 543 Yampa Ave.
The market will take place this year from June 21 through Sept. 20. Set-up fees, site sizes, tax issues and product limitations will be discussed at the meeting, among other topics.
Call Bob or Diane Grubb at 620-4243.

A story on the education page in the Saturday Morning Press, “Where sidewalks begin,” caught the attention Monday of editorial board members, and for good reason.
The story outlined a proposed City of Craig project to install sidewalks in and around existing neighborhoods near Craig Middle School and Sandrock Elementary School.
Sidewalks, as it’s been noted in this opinion space numerous times over the years, are a recurring issue of concern for not only editorial board members, but also many people in the community.
A $188,905 Safe Routes to School grant from the Colorado Department of Transportation will pay for the design, engineering and construction of the sidewalk project.

Colorado’s top Republicans were in Denver on Friday and Saturday vying for district and state delegate support and a chance to appear on the June 26 primary ballot.
With five Northwest Colorado Republicans running for offices tied to Moffat County, the belief going into Friday’s multi-county district assemblies at the Colorado Convention Center was that each candidate would get their names on the June ballot.
However, there were some surprises.
Perhaps the biggest occurred in the race for Colorado House District 57 between Ron Roesener, of Parachute, and Bob Rankin, of Glenwood Springs.

Eleven county, state and federal officials cited concerns during an intergovernmental meeting Tuesday about Northwest Colorado’s unseasonably dry spring.
“With winter being an almost non-event, we’re chasing our tails a little bit trying to get things open,” said Ron Dellacroce, Yampa River State Park and Elkhead Reservoir manager. “Usually things are still wet right now and we need to hold people off, but everything in the river is open. Cross Mountain is getting a lot of use and we’re going to get Elkhead open about a month early as well.”
The Moffat County Commission hosted Tuesday’s meeting.
During the last intergovernmental meeting the commission hosted, Dellacroce was worried about his department’s budget.